Sparks fly from the rusting girders as a strike flies wide again. Both are fast, both able, but the weapons they heft are heavy, and the fight has gone on long beyond Naki endurance, beyond mammal endurance.

Came down upon her head.

“I only ever tried to help you live in peace!”

The creature he fights is a noble monster. The sweating, breathing, oozing mammal, fragments of the Dark Arts oozing from its every stinking pore, but at the same time he sees the glorious beauty of its talent, its fantastic manipulation of cultural ideas and feelings, and of course the might of the his Hammer.

Clang! Clang! Maxwell's silver hammer

A lucky strike. He falls backwards, scrabbles for purchase on the treacherous flooring.

His ribs are broken. A few days in the repair tanks will see him right again. And how many can the same be said for - in Africa, in Asia, the dying masses who never again need to fear that some chance accident will cripple them and starve their families? How many others has he saved?

“This is pointless! Give up!”

Made sure that she was dead.

The noble ape lunges forward with murder in his eyes.

Back in school again Maxwell plays the fool again.

They always loved him for his ideas. His brilliant, sparkling, burning ideas, darting and leaping forth to bring together notions and concepts from such different areas. He was a visionary, they said, and they trusted him with the safety of Earth because they knew that someday, some terrible, terrifying leap of logic would be required to do what must be done.

So he waits behind,Writing fifty times “I must not beSo, o, o, o..”

The mammal lunges in as he backs away. One step. Six steps. Ten steps. Far away from the rest of the fight, where he can do no harm.

But when she turns her back on the boy,

And just as he's seen it a hundred times in his head, the lunge. The strike.

“FOR NIBIRU!” he roars as he stands and, every muscle screaming in anticipation of the crushing pain to come, lowers his defence.

He creeps up from behind.

Bamf

A figure appears between them, looking for all the world like an elder Allison or a double of Paul McCartney.

The hammer strikes. The blow shattering him as he protects what remains of his son.

Bang! Bang!

The scream is piercing as Allison collapses to his knees. With tears in his eyes he fixes his stare upon Wilson and pulls the initiator cord.